Spider-Man and Jameson Bury The Hatchet

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Well, I've never been all that interested in the strip to begin with, honestly. I started reading the books early in JMS's run, with the 9-11 tribute issue and the arc where Aunt May finally discovered his secret and confronted him about it. I fell in love with his work on it, and I still feel he has had one of the BEST runs it's ever had- up until the order from on high to nix the marriage, which is allegedly why he LEFT the book and moved over to Thor. I also loved Peter David's run on Friendly Neighborhood S-M, which is my second favorite Spidey series. I loved Strazynski's take on the origin and WHY it happened, as well as some of the characters he brought in, how he wove Spidey into the larger fabric of the MU, and the dynamics of Peter's relationships during his run.

That said, it was the revolving-door roster of writers, the meandering plot-lines, endless ret-cons, and outright ignoring of past history that soured me on the comic after BND began. I just feel like they pissed all over the long-time fans, in a blatant attempt to bring in new ones for the sake of netting a "younger" audience. It didn't work. Even younger fans were too familiar with a Peter attached to M-J because of the movies.

Gwen's death (and her secret connection to Norman Osbourn and the whole mess with her twin children) was at least still relevant prior to BND, even being given its own remembrance story in the book Spider-Man: Blue. These kinds of things were what drew me into the Spidey books to begin with, and it just feels like that kind of story-telling has been thrown out, in favor of the next big event, like Superior, or Spider-Island.